Prof. Prasanta Ray has come up with a novel and extensive view of pain and the human condition. This is a sequel to his previous book on Everyday Lifeworlds of Paintings: Possibilities of Materialist Histories with reproductions of paintings and sculptures. The sequel dwells on the suffering of people marginalised by the social set up. Together they explore a vast range of civilisation, history and society.  Here he has brought to the fore different categories of people. These include a number of outsiders (outlanders). Among these odd groups are included refugees, courtesans, prostitutes, abducted women, dandies, coolies, coal miners, women engaged in making cow dung cakes, orphans, madmen, witches, outcastes, untouchables, a bagdi family, etc. To this list, Ray adds strange characters: rascals, cheats, scapegoats, nitwits, idiots, hypocrites, slanderers, kleptomaniacs, eavesdroppers and the envious. Readers may find some of these characters, not poor at all. Some of them may indeed be seen as living at the cost of others. Prof. Prasanta Ray, however, is talking of the anguished voices of ordinary people who may not necessarily be impoverished. He has in his mind Les Damnés de la Terre or ‘The Wretched of the Earth’. They are wretched on account of social condemnation and loneliness. Prof. Prasanta Ray assesses pictures with poems and his formidable list of illustrations covers Europe, India (especially Bengal) and Latin America (especially Brazil). There are diverse themes ranging from the Crucifixion of Christ and the death of Gandhi to the Mohonto-Elokeshi affair and the Bengal Famine of 1943. Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and Adriane Varejão cry for space with the Kalighat painter, Raja Ravi Varma, Gaganendranath Tagore, Somnath Hore and Jogen Chowdhury.

His book is not chronologically organised. It is organised in a rough time frame combining with the diverse arts of Europe, Bengal and Latin America. Time and space are deftly handled. Besides images, a range of other artefacts have gone into the research. These include Jatra party and Sukumar Ray’s Cinema posters, the cover of Pagla Dashu designed by Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak's cinema stills, a safety Match Box cover, an address to Queen Victoria by a girl in an Indian orphanage, a photograph of the Marich Jhapi deaths of 1978-1979, photographs of mad men, an engraving of a work-house, and comic book drawings. 

This is a major contribution to a novel subject. The book ends with elements of a collage by Prof. Prasanta Ray. It contains the images of, what seems to me, Gandhi’s Dandi march in Salt Satyagraha, and the Writers’ Building. I am proud to have been his colleague. 

Rajat Kanta Ray

May 10, 2025.